


and other things beginning with S

by Tozette



Series: Soulmate AU Challenge Fics [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-26
Updated: 2016-10-26
Packaged: 2018-08-27 03:17:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8385163
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tozette/pseuds/Tozette
Summary: Snape is born and within minutes Eileen has covered his soul mark. She refuses to let anybody near it. It’s probably the kindest thing she does for him.





	

**Author's Note:**

> First Note: Part of the writing challenge I've imposed on myself over on tumblr. If you wanna check out what I'm up to, you can find the rules [over here on my personal blog](http://tozettewrites.tumblr.com/post/152004964326/soulmate-aus-writing-challenge-to-myself). I think the most important thing to know is that it does mean that anything posted as a result of the challenge _has not been edited_. It is raw, and like raw food, may be less appetising than when cooked.
> 
> Second Note: Pairing from ao3 user Sylvaine

Snape is born and within minutes Eileen has covered his soul mark. She refuses to let anybody near it. It’s probably the kindest thing she does for him.

Soul marks are the deepest kind of magic -- and they are magic, even if muggles can have them, and even if there’s a minority of purebood supremacists who refuse to call them magic because of it. And like most deep magic, nobody understands them really well. They defy manipulation most of the time. Circumstances conspire to keep them accurate.

Severus Snape has a very long mark, which is theoretically better than what a great many people get. Many people have things like ‘three butterbeers thanks!’ or ‘hey,’ written in somebody else’s handwriting on them. Snape’s is long. It’s specific. He’ll have no problem recognising his soul mate when they speak to him for the first time.

That’s good, because since he was old enough to understand why it had to be covered he’s wanted to hex their eyebrows off.

_You’re the one the Dark Lord’s so interested in, are you? Skinny, seedy, slimy, scaredy little half-blood... What’s so special about you, then?_

Severus Snape has to keep his soul mark hidden because it references the Dark Lord -- right there, on his skin. Nobody is openly accusing anybody of very much just yet, but everybody knows that there’s a threat building itself in Wizarding Britain. And now it is Severus Snape’s sallow skin that puts a name to it.

It isn’t an auspicious beginning.

For a while, Severus is actually the lynch pin in his parents’ marriage. Their project, embarked upon together, growing in their shadows. But then he needs too much. Always hungry. Always helpless. Needing, crying, constant. In the end they both resent him -- Eileen for trapping her with the ghost of lost opportunities, Tobias for the magic; both of them for taking the attention of one from the other.

It’s not that they don’t love each other, exactly. They’re soul mates, so there’s nothing for it, nobody would tell them they’re better off apart. But on the other hand, they’re soul mates. They’re obsessed. They’re jealous. They burn brightly and consume one another, and no other relationship is allowed to encroach.

They don’t share. Neither of them. They don’t really share with Severus, either.

And, see, Severus has radical politics written across his wrist, where all soul marks belong. It burrows, mean and insidious, between him and his mother.

He catches it when Eileen looks at him, looks at her husband, looks back at him. Tobias Snape is a muggle married to a pureblood witch. There’s uncertainty in her eyes and around her mouth.

By the time Snape’s old enough to understand he’s too sick of them both to do anything about it. Let her wonder what it means. He sits alone in his room and maims insects while their marriage dissolves around them.

* * *

He meets Lily.

She seems ...nice.

He keeps his wrists covered when he talks to her, and he thinks they probably won’t be good friends. She’s a muggleborn. That much is obvious.

He tells her about magic, tells her about the letters that will come out. She doesn’t believe him until she gets hers in the post. She’s delirious with excitement. Her sister’s obviously, painfully jealous.

Severus gets his letter around the same time, although his parents are expecting it. His dad’s drunk, because of course he is, but Eileen’s up and she’s not nursing a pounding head and shaking fingers, so she’s there to read it with him.

“I suppose you’ll be sorted into Slytherin,” she says, glancing at his hand, at his wrist.

Snape shrugs. It’s a fait acompli, really. Where else?

Tobias’s not the kind of alcoholic people show on the television. He’s not mean or abusive or violent. He’s just, well. _Drunk_. Mostly, Eileen and Severus ignore him until he needs cleaning up. Which is often. And sometimes he snaps, so you have to be a bit careful around him, especially in the mornings. But he’s not _bad_. He’s just like a kind of opinionated furniture. Today his opinion is that all this bloody magic shite needs to get out of his house, so Eileen and Severus take their conversation to his bedroom.

Snape’s resigned by the time he sits on the stool and jams the Hat upon his greasy hair. The Hat never tells him he has another choice, either. Nobody does, really.

Lily is sorted into Gryffindor, which makes a certain amount of sense. It’s one more reason not to talk to her. Pity. In a different world, Snape wonders if they might have been friends. 

(...Probably not, he decides.)

* * *

The soul mark really is a bit damning if you think about it. Severus has thought about it, of course. He’s processed it from every direction by the time he turns ten. Overthinking things until everything is foul and tainted with his grinding thoughts is one of the great talents bestowed upon Severus Snape by both nature and nurture.

His soul mate is obviously a supporter of the Dark Lord, and just as obviously knows the man -- if indeed he _is_ a man -- personally.

The thing is, nobody’s really quite sure if there is a Dark Lord just yet. People still think of Grindelwald when they hear the phrase.

It’s only if you’re looking for it, or indeed if you have a clear indication of it tattooed indelibly on your skin, that it becomes clear. It’s a secret built from fragments, little stories that make a dangerous whole: people who go missing, events that conspire and muggles who get themselves injured in little altercations or incidental riots.

It’s not like there’s anything obvious, it’s not like anybody just rolls out of bed one day and declares himself The Dark Lord, Thanks Very Much, Pleased to Meet You.

Severus knows because he’s looking for it. He’s holding a piece of the puzzle.

He figures it’s like this: either the Dark Lord rises, takes over, changes magical Britain and -- wins, basically. In that case, Severus Snape is a half blood and he’s fucked and half the people he knows will probably die horribly in the conflict.

Or... or the Dark Lord loses, and his soul mate’s definitely toast.

Severus is holding a piece of the puzzle, is privy to a lot for somebody so young, and he does what he does best: he keeps his head down and his mouth shut, and he thinks. He thinks and thinks until his thoughts are processed mush. Not that thinking does him much good.

It probably says something about Severus that despite overthinking virtually everything, he accepts ‘ _skinny, seedy, slimy, scaredy_ ’ as a given. His soul mate’s pretty good at alliteration, but otherwise nothing registers about it -- it just sounds like him.

* * *

Snape’s sixteen, a potions prodigy, child of a dead mother and a drunk father. He is poor, he is unfriendly and he is ugly. None of these things are particularly well-regarded and he gets a hot, bubbly sort of joy out of rubbing them in people’s faces.

Snape knows everything about everything and he’s happy to tell people about it just for the privilege of making them feel a little stupider.

He surrounds himself with the wrong type, or maybe the right type, qualifier pending who you are and inevitably what’s written on your wrist.

He sort of resents the soul mate system. The whole thing. Sure, in the fantasy world where he’s unmarked and free, he’d still be alone. But he wouldn’t feel the tug of it at his mind, wouldn’t be weighed down by the obligation.

He meets his soul mate at a party in Wiltshire over the holidays. He’d much prefer to be studying for his NEWTs because Severus Snape needs to stand out -- way out -- if he wants an apprenticeship; he hasn’t the contacts or the money to do it otherwise.

(Professor Slughorn has made that much abundantly clear over and over.

“Mr Snape, it wouldn’t _kill_ you to be polite. I know you can behave, if you put your mind to it--” he says more than once.

Severus tells him he’ll take it under advisement, because Severus Snape is a fucking smartass.)

The party is lovely. These things always are. Severus can count on one hand the number of people invited whose bloodlines _don’t_ span back to wizards in Charlemagne’s time. He’s supposed to feel privileged, thrilled to little bits that his clever potions and hard studying have gotten him so far, ready to expire with awe at his illustrious surroundings -- but he’s mostly just tired. Bored. Anxious.

He has things to do, and there’s nobody here he wants to talk to even if he knows he should. Even if he knows he should rein in his temper, trot out his manners so they can blink blearily in the light of day for a few minutes before he kicks them back under his bed to --

This metaphor has gotten away from him.

“Severus,” says his host, a twenty-something blond who gives his name airs with a posh, drawling accent. “This is my sister in law, Bella LeStrange. She’s expressed an interest in meeting you, though Merlin knows why --”

“Bella _trix_ ,” says an equally upper-class accent. “And you know why. Don’t you have a party to get back to? Run along.”

Snape looks to her, and she’s -- different. He’s not sure if she’s a great beauty or a complete fright, and he suspects that’s intentional. She’s compelling, dramatic, and sort of a ruin all at once. Her hair is thick and dark, her eyes are huge and shadowed. Her mouth is painted. Her robes are expensive.

“You’re charming as ever, Bella,” their host says, biting out the nickname. “The two of you will get on like a house on fire, I’m sure.” A pause. “Incidentally, if you must burn something, take it outside.” And then there’s the snap-snap-snap of low-heeled dragonhide boots on the broad marble floors and he’s gone.

“So you’re the one the Dark Lord’s so interested in, are you?” muses Bellatrix LeStrange, standing with one hand upon her hip and the other lazily curled near where she’s keeping her wand. “Skinny, seedy, slimy, scaredy little half-blood... what’s so special about you, then?”

Ah. _Of course._

“I don’t suppose it’s ever occurred to you,” says Snape right back, “to try to familiarise yourself with the concept of ‘discretion’.” He feels a thrill of spite and gratification deep in his belly at the look on her face. _Yes, me_ , he thinks, lifting his chin. _Too bad._

Bellatrix LeStrange looks at him, sixteen, skinny, seedy, slimy, scaredy, _soul mate_. She straightens her spine and a wild curl of dark hair slides away from her face. Her attention is sharp, heavy, cutting.

There is something mean and savage beneath her makeup and expensive clothing.

She looks at Snape and he can read it on her face, behind her eyes, in her hips and her crossed arms and the shape of her mouth. She is not impressed.

That’s okay. Neither is he.

So much for love at first sight.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a weird pairing and I wish I'd had more time to work with it inside the rules. Was there anything in particular you found you liked about this? Let me know. :)


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